Conventional fire pits have been in use for many years and are designed to sustain flames for heating and ornamental purposes and for the purposes of containing a fire and preventing it from spreading. In general, fire pits provide warmth and ambience and are most often used outdoors, such as in outdoor patio areas. Fire pits are available in both built-in configurations, e.g., physically mounted or secured in or to the ground, and free-standing configurations, e.g., a portable fire pit constructed from a ceramic material, such as stone or brick, metal or other material, that can be placed by the user in a desired location. Conventional fire pits are typically fueled by natural gas, propane, or bioethanol, and in some instances wood burning fire pits are also utilized.
Conventional fire pits are typically configured to provide open flames by burning propane received from a propane tank, for heating the surroundings. These flames typically disseminate heat or thermal energy, predominantly, only by conduction heat transfer and/or convention heat transfer. Specifically, conventional fire pits transfer thermal energy to objects in contact with the flame by conduction heat transfer, via microscopic movement of electrons, and transfer thermal energy to the surroundings by convection heat transfer, via heat diffusion and bulk movement of the surrounding air. As such, since conventional fire pits require a medium, such as air, for heat transfer, the intensity, area and direction of the propagation of heat is constrained and influenced by the properties of the medium. In this regard, conventional fire pits provide the higher temperature/heating in regions proximate to the heat source (flame) with a gradual decrease in temperature/heat intensity in regions away from the source. This progressive reduction in heat intensity and/or temperature, as a function of the distance away from the heat source, is typically effected by energy dissipation and unavoidable losses in the surrounding air and atmosphere. For example, even though the flame heat source is at a predetermined temperature, surrounding cold air would lessen the heat or temperature perceived by a user in the vicinity to greatly below the predetermined temperature, due to factors like wind, diffusion and attaining thermal equilibrium. Furthermore, it is often challenging to focus the heat provided by such convection heat transfers of open flames to a particular desired area.
The present invention alleviates the foregoing drawbacks and provides an improvement to existing fire pits by providing a fire pit with multiple modes of heat transfer.